An Update on the Gygax Statue

ENWorld is reporting on a letter received from Gail Gygax regarding the Gary Gygax statue:

While I can’t tell you all the details of the memorial – if approved – will be great – the few people that know the concept are wild about it – so I am excited.

For those of you going to GaryCon in March 2010, I’m sure this will be a huge topic of discussion.

News Roundup

Black Blade Publishing is now being stocked by Noble Knight Games –  if you can’t find them at your FLGS, try Noble Knights. Black Blade is the publishing company that is adapting some of Goodman Games’ Dungeon Crawl Classic modules for 1st Edition Advanced Dungeons & Dragons.

Expeditious Retreat Press are having their annual sale. This is a great time to pick up some fantastic items for newer and older editions. Brave Halfling Publishing also announced an updated compilation of their “Delving Deeper” series for Labyrinth Lord.

There was quite a bit of “unearthed arcana”  from Gary Gygax being talked about the past fortnight. First, Randall at retroroleplaying.com shared his discovery of some Gary Gygax articles dating back to 1976 in PDF scans of an old wargaming “fanzine” – Liasons Dangereuses. The blog Beyond The Black Gate shared a link to an essay written by Gary in 2001 about how the author Jack Vance influenced Dungeons & Dragons. And from the blog Grognardia comes another discovery of a 1975 article by Gary in a European wargaming fanzine which goes into some detail about the famous Castly Greyhawk and its dungeons beneath!

Another interesting find from the early days of D&D was an interview by the site Gaming Brouhaha about a Dungeons & Dragons summer camp held annually in the early 1980s. The subject of the interview, Ben Robbins, has released more pictures on his site from the camp. Imagine what would have been said if this camp had been in the public’s attention during the D&D hysteria?

If you are a Traveller fan, this will interest you – rare Traveller fanzines are being given away by the Retro Roleplaying blog. The blog’s author, Randall, has a fundraiser going for his wife’s medical bills due to skin cancer. He is giving away some very rare items – take a look at the announcement and help out if you can – it’s for a good cause.

Traditional Roleplaying Game support

As part of the TARGA mission to support traditional, older roleplaying games, we’d like to start providing resources and links to useful information, mailing groups and downloadable content. We are a Big Tent to all genres, so the resources can be wide and plentiful. Those resources can be found on our wiki – feel free to join and add and edit resources that you may know of!

http://www.traditionalgaming.org/wiki/index.php/Game_Resources

[News] Swords & Wizardry Miniatures Competition

An interesting recent development for Mythmere Games has been the licensing of the right to produce a Swords & Wizardry miniatures line to Center Stage Miniatures. On the heels of that development comes the following announcement of a competition:

Center Stage Miniatures has licensed the right to produce Swords & Wizardry miniatures, and they are running a contest for Knockspell Magazine readers! Write up the best new monster and Center Stage will sculpt it and put it into their Swords & Wizardry line. Here are the rules: (1) it has to be a monster; (2) it has to be roughly human-sized; (3) the description has to be in Swords & Wizardry format; (4) the winner has to sign a contract allowing Center Stage to produce the minis for as long as they want to. There’s not a money prize, but it isn’t every day you get to see one of your own creations immortalized in metal.

How to enter the contest: send your monster description, in Swords & Wizardry format, to centerstagehobbies@yahoo.com, attention Matt Solarz, who is the president of Center Stage Miniatures. Center Stage will judge the entries, and the winning entry will be sculpted and sold in the Swords & Wizardry line of miniatures, as well as being published in the magazine. The monster description will also be printed on the packaging for the miniature, with your name as author. The first contest runs from September 1, 2009 until December 31, 2009. Fire up your creativity and make some monsters!

An excellent opportunity for anybody who would like to see a monster from their imagination immortalised in the form of a sculpted miniature! Best of luck!